when you read “NCAA” or “college football”, replace it with your national market.

when you read “Florida”, “LSU” or any other team name, replace it with your business’ name OR if you really want to turn things on their head – with your biggest competitor’s name.

…and continue along those lines so that it becomes a story about your market, your business and your competition.

All done?

Just in case, a sample

Let me give you a sample since I suspect some of you might have thought one read of a seemingly irrelevant story was enough.

To make things a tad more clear, let’s take that coffee shop I occasionally talk about and use it as an example:

“At the core of our agreement is the fact that every SEC-controlled football gamemom and pop coffee shop will be have Starbucks coffee available to SECStarbucks fans throughout the conference territorystate, and indeed the country, via an ESPNour distribution platform or through our partners,” said John Wildhack, ESPN’sSome Executive, Starbucks’ executive vice president for programmingcoffee shop acquisition and strategy.

At a time when most coffee shops and cafes are slashing budgets due to the poor economy, programsStarbucks stores suddenly have more resources at their disposal. Defending national champion Florida Starbucks storesis are adding $5.9 million to its athleticmarketing budget next year and still had enough left over to kick in $6 million to cover overheadthe university’s general fund.

Scary? Only if you’re the Big 12 or PAC-10 and you’re still reading the original article.

Snatch the pebble

If you truly are in the same business, your competitor’s strength is the target. Take it away and use it against them.

In Starbucks’ case, their strengths are their consistency (coffee is roasted in centralized warehouse roasting centers under highly-mechanized, controlled conditions), their retail/wholesale distribution systems and their buying power (ok, and their people, mostly).

Notice I didn’t say jack about insanely great, freshly-brewed coffee that was roasted by the owner just before the shop opened this morning.

Starbucks can no longer compete with that, or at least, they’re no longer willing to. Putting roasters in 4000 shops costs huge money (sorry, shareholders!) and takes up valuable retail space in those expensive locations they choose, plus they’d have to hire (or train) someone to do the roasting.

Suddenly, their strength is now their weakness, and you wield the Quality Kryptonite.